Things we left behind

Post by: Beth

We've had to leave many things behind in St. Louis. In some capacity, we've both left our jobs... we've left our first "home" as a married couple... we've left behind great friends that we already miss... and we've left behind a sort of comfort that St. Louis came to offer us. We've left behind the only things we've known as "Beth and Raja Gupta," and we're unsure of what our next home will be like, what our next jobs will be like, who our friends may be, and what comforts and risks await us. The move to St. Louis and then our move away has been a rollercoaster of sorts -- We've had our happy moments, our sad moments, exciting times, anxious times, and it's really been a great opportunity to grow and learn more about ourselves and how we play the cards life deals us.

Ironically in the middle of all of this, one of our toughest decisions so far hasn't involved a home, or money, or logistics --- it's centered around my cat, Aidan. (As silly as it may seem to some of you, this was a big thing for us -- Even allergic Raja grew to love Aidan and Aidan finally returned the love right back.) When we first started getting choices for overseas rotation locations, a huge factor was "How do we get Aidan over to this country? What is involved for him during all of this? What's best for him?" As we came close to a rotation in Singapore, we fretted over mandatory quarantine. When we were about to accept a rotation in Seoul, we did hours of research on what all could be involved in flying Aidan to the city. And when we finally ended up with Bombay as the next locale, we were excited because it seemed that the move to India could be relatively easy for Aidan compared to some other countries. However, the more we made calls and did research, we learned that this could be quite a difficult move for my persnickity furball of a cat. Aidan doesn't like change very much (I can hear the jokes, guys.. not funny), and he's scared of pretty much everything (again.. not funny). ;) The 15-hour flight, the possibility of quarantine, and the numerous vet visits, poking and prodding that must take place before the move... All in all, the poor cat would have to go through quite a bit and after many tears and frustrations, I decided it would be best to try to find him a good stable home for the duration of our international travels.

Luckily, my boss in St. Louis has a wife that rivals any cat-lover I've met anywhere. After many emails to her with the caveat that Aidan is not one that immediately takes to new people and places, Gretchen decided she was up for the challenge and so Raja and I (ok mostly me...) were thrown onto another rollercoaster. Knowing Aidan would be moving into a new home (and SOON!) made it real and it was very hard to know that I didn't have many more days with Aidan before the move. At the same time, the relief that we were doing what was best for Aidan was a great feeling, and I really felt like John and Gretchen would provide a great home for the little critter.

So Raja and I made the drive over to John & Gretchen's with a curious Aidan in tow, and we stayed about an hour to get him acclimated and answer any of Gretchen's questions. We took his vet folder, lots of info about what he likes and how he acts, his bed, a new toy, and all his supplies. To our surprise, Aidan took to the house very well and even let Gretchen hold him! By the time we left, Aidan had found a spot under an end table and seemed quite comfortable -- we were shocked. Turns out that after we left, Aidan wasn't the best new houseguest ever and did his growling thing (no surprise there... he means no harm). But the next evening (Raja and I were flying to New Jersey on this day), Gretchen sent a follow-up email and said he seemed to be doing much better and was venturing around the house and exploring. Day after day, patient Gretchen sent me emails to let me know how Aidan was doing, what new things he'd attempted, and his overall accomplishments of the day. And day after day, they saw improvements. As of 2 days ago, Aidan was purring for Gretchen and letting him pet him, and seemed to be starting to follow her around the house. So he seems to be settling in just fine, and Raja and I are extremely relieved and happy. It makes us really feel like we did the right thing for Aidan, and Gretchen has just been wonderful and very understanding during all of this. She's already taken pictures of him and sent them to us, and she gives me daily updates about him. She's understanding Aidan like only a real cat-lover can, and I have a feeling Aidan is going to not want to leave her when we return from overseas! We miss him very much, but these updates help a lot, and I have a feeling it's going to be a while before I quit diving for Raja's Blackberry everytime it vibrates with a new e-mail (Gretchen copies Raja on all of the Aidan updates so I can get them even if I'm not home).

Here are some pictures of him that Gretchen sent us recently... He isn't the most photogenic cat ever, but we love him anyway. :)

“D-weezy on the track! D-weezy on the track!”

Post by: Raja

These are the words I just heard as I watched Beth implore me to blog about our recent foray into downtown St. Louis to catch a Cardinals game. Luckily, I am listening to my ipod using my new sound-isolating earphones so I can’t hear a word she’s saying. All I hear is Baby Boy Da Prince rhyming poetically. Unfortunately, Etymotic hasn’t come up with a way to eliminate incessant tapping on my shoulder, so here I am blogging. I guess its really not that bad. I like to write and like to keep up with friends and family, so here it is. My take on the baseball game:

When we found out that we were going to be in St. Louis for this rotation and we finalized our living arrangements, we were really excited about being downtown and within walking distance to Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals. We had visions of taking a nice summer stroll down to the park, catching a game under the sun, and enjoying one of the pleasures St. Louis offers its citizens. We went shopping multiple times and multiple times Beth would pick up a shirt, dress, top or some other article of clothing and exclaim “This would be great for the ballpark!” Fully endorsing anything that allow me to watch more sports, I’d nod in agreement and encourage the purchase.

So there we were, in early August, about two weeks from completing our stay in St. Louis and we hadn’t even thought about going to a Cardinals game yet. I guess on the plus side, Beth got a lot of new clothes… In any case, we didn’t want to leave the STL without going to one game, so we looked at the schedule, picked out a Tuesday night game and made plans to spend the evening taking part in Red Bird Fever. The game definitely had some great potential… and in the end turned out to be really exciting. I bought the tickets about 4 hours before Manny Ramierez’s trade to the Dodgers was announced, and what do you know, the tickets I had bought had us going to see the Dodgers vs. the Cardinals. St. Louis was all a buzz about Carpenter, their up and coming young pitcher coming off of the DL and facing Manny and the Dodgers in his first game back. It was shaping up to be a great game.

Tuesday morning rolls around and I check the forecast. Rain. We’ll, that’s no good. I was hoping that the weather man, true to form, would be wrong, but we weren’t so lucky. We got to the game okay – on time and dry. The game was moving along nicely, but there wasn’t much action. Mostly three up, three down through the first 4 innings. I was enjoying the game, but Beth was caught in a quandary. She hated the fact that there was not really much action, but at the same time was grinning and bearing it due to the speedy nature of the game. This seemed to work out well for both of us.

Then the inevitable happened. It started to rain. The first rain delay wasn’t too bad – yes, I said the first one. As soon as they got the tarp out to cover the infield, it stopped raining so the entire length of the delay was basically the time it took them to un-roll and roll the tarp. However, after about 15 minutes of play, it started to pour again and they had to bring the tarp out for a second time. This one lasted considerably longer and Beth quickly realized that a fast-moving, no action game was much better than a non-moving, no action game. Luckily, we had seats in a covered part of the stadium so we were able to wait out the storm in relative comfort.

After about 40 minutes, the game was back on again and the second half was really exciting. There were tons of hits, a few home runs, and even some 9th inning drama. The Cards were up and looked like they had the game won, but in the ninth, the Dodgers made an improbable run and closed a 3 run gap. We had left our seats just before the run started because we thought the game was over, but, on a whim, stopped on our way out to watch Manny bat one last time. Wouldn’t you know it, he got on base. So we stayed to watch the next guy. He got on base. So we stayed to watch the next guy. And he hit a home run. The game was tied and we had a feeling it was going to go into extra innings. I wanted to stay since the game was just getting good, but it was a Tuesday night, already around 11PM, and Beth was exhausted so we decided to head home and catch all the drama on TV.

I stayed up to watch another couple innings on TV, but by midnight, the game was still running. However, the Cards are not the Heels and my loyalty to sleep outweighed my loyalty to St. Louis Baseball. I was happy to find out the next morning that the Cards managed to win the game though. Beth couldn’t have cared less.

Comings & Goings...

Post by: Beth

Hi Everyone!

We hope you’re all doing well and life is treating you well. J Summer is winding up for most of you, and so many of you have kids traipsing back to or starting school and we’ve loved keeping up with everyone via your own blogs, picture updates, and emails. For us, our time in St. Louis is coming to a close and it’s a mixture of excitement and a bit of sadness as well. Raja really grew to like this city and what it offers – professional sports teams, plenty of outdoor activities in the summer, a wide range of really good restaurants, and constant events being held in different parts of the city. For me, I grew to love the people I worked with and the friends I made here. I was surprised to grow so close to people in 6 short months, and they created so many of the memories I’ll take with me from St. Louis. For both Raja and myself, St. Louis has been very much a learning experience, and in some capacity it will be a place to which we’ll be tied to for a long time.

Next up for us is our move to Manhattan for Raja’s team project challenge. (I think that’s what it’s called anyway…) We’ll be flying to New York Sunday, August 24th and will be moving into an apartment called Oakwood, which is at the intersection of 6th Avenue and 32nd Street. (That means nothing to me but it’s what the website says). Apparently, it is close to Madison Square Gardens, Chelsea, and the Garment District (again.. I know nothing). We will stay there for 5 weeks while Raja works on a team project… I’m really excited about New York because I really enjoyed all the visits I made there while Raja lived there for 6 months prior to our move to STL, and we’re both looking forward to exploring another section of Manhattan.

At the very end of September, we will be moving from Manhattan to Bombay, India. This is Raja’s first site on his international leg of the Citi rotation program, and should definitely be a different experience. Since Raja’s family is from India, they’ve been able to offer some pieces of advice and some knowledge as far as what to expect in other parts of India, but we’re still pretty unsure of what Bombay will hold for us. We’re doing a lot of research and are excited about some things, nervous about others… Bombay seems to be a bit more Westernized than many parts on India, but still is going to be a bit of a culture shock. I’ve been trying to learn a little bit of Hindi so I can understand what’s going on sometimes and communicate as best as possible, but most people in Bombay can also speak some English, so hopefully I’ll be able to function on a very basic level communication-wise. I’ll hopefully be able to learn much more in the next 6 weeks before we go and Raja is getting to brush up and learning new things as well, so we’re hoping to make it a bit easier on ourselves by being able to understand and speak the native language. In the meantime, we’ll keep doing research and trying to piece together information that can help us prepare… Thank you already to those who have answered some of our questions (omg what do I wear in India?!?!!?!) and given us feedback, and we hope you’re ready for more questions… ;)

That’s a bit of an update on where we are right now and we’re excited to see what comes next for us… We’ll make sure we post pictures of our transition from St. Louis to Birmingham for a few days, back up to NYC and of our new home when we arrive. We hope things are going great for each of you, and keep sending us updates and emails and pictures!

Love,
Beth & Raja

"Let's hold up those glasses again...!!"

Post by: Beth


Yey for birthdays! My birthday was this past Friday, and I'd wanted to do something fun and special for the occasion. As cliche as it is, I REALLY like having fondue for special occasions. It's just something different that we don't do a lot, and there's something fun about controlling what sauce you use with what type of meat, what style cooking oil you use, what kinds of spices are used, and making up fun combinations for the other one to try. So we decided Saturday night would be the night we'd go have fondue. We'd make up our minds pretty early during the week, so we had plenty of time to make reservations for the date and time we wanted... we thought. There's a fondue place right near our loft called "Simply Fondue" and I was pretty excited to try it since it was new to us and looks really pretty inside. Raja started calling on Tuesday to try to make the reservations. He called a couple of times Tuesday, but was unable to get anything but an answering machine. That's not too strange really, because there's a lot of restaurants and lounges in St. Louis that keep odd hours that are hard to figure out. Neither of us were worried. He called again Wednesday and got the answering machine several more times, so decided that must just be one of those businesses that doesn't actually answer the phone half the time. He left a message this time and we still didn't get too concerned. Thursday he tried again... relentlessly.. left another message finally and called me sounding baffled. I knew they were open, because I'd seen people eating dinner in the front of the restaurant Monday night when I'd driven by, so he drove by that night as well. No one was eating in there Thursday night, but again... some businesses here keep really strange hours and it's not unusual to see no pattern at all. Friday while I was at work, he called me and his words were: "I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?" I should have known better because he's used this phrase before and it ended up being ONLY bad news for me, but I went ahead and asked for the good news first. "The good news is that Simply Fondue finally called me back today." "YEY!! I'm so excited!! Did you get us a reservation?!" "The bad news is that they called me back to tell me that they can't serve us because they are closing down the restaurant. For good." As you can imagine, my face fell and the possibility of fondue for my birthday dinner seemed dismal. But Raja had looked up another fondue restaurant and said we could go there if I wanted instead. We'd gone to the "Melting Pot" once in Birmingham so it wasn't as new to us, but I was still excited about fondue so Saturday night at the "Melting Pot" it was!

The experience was great, and I was really glad in the end that we ended up going to that restaurant. The waiter was really nice, the food was so yummy, and the whole experience was just a lot of fun. We had Jamaican jerk sirloin, garlic chicken, teriyaki shrimp, filet mignon, and of course the cheese appetizer dip with apples, veggies, and bread. We also had yummy chocolate with peanut butter as our dessert fondue! Our waiter volunteered to take pictures of us constantly, which was VERY nice of him... but it was really hard not to bust out laughing each time because his phrase was always "Let's hold up those glasses again...!!!" Raja and I obliged because he was so nice and he'd really gone out of his way for us the whole night, but it made for some funny pictures of us half-heartedly posing with our glasses. ;) Here are some pictures from our birthday dinner.

Visitors!

Post by: Beth


Hi again everyone.. Sorry we've been so behind, but we've been super busy and just haven't had a whole lot of time to update. I hope we still have some loyal readers out there despite our absence.. ;)


A few weekends ago, we were lucky enough to have LOTS of visitors here in St. Louis! My mom, cousin Casey, and little cousin Alex got to come from Thursday - Sunday. Raja's brother, Rishi got to come from Friday - Tuesday that same weekend. It was the perfect time to get out and do some of the fun things we'd been wanting to do, so we took full advantage of the weekend and company.


Casey and Alex did make a trip to the zoo Friday, so visit her blog for zoo pictures. Mom & I were running around doing passport errands and shopping on Washington Ave while they were at the zoo, so we didn't get to go on that journey. We did all meet up that night for dinner after Raja got off from work -- We ate at one of my fav restaurants here in St. Louis, Stir Crazy. Back at the apartment after dinner, Alex requested a pool lesson from Raja, which of course resulted in a slight injury for Raja.





Saturday, we cooked out in the early afternoon, then headed off to City Museum, which is "an eclectic mixture of children's playground, funhouse, surrealistic pavilion, and architectural marvel made out of unique, found objects. The artist and his longtime crew of 20 artisans have constructed the museum from the very stuff of the city; and, as a result, it has urban roots deeper than any other institutions'. Reaching no farther than municipal borders for its reclaimed building materials, CITY MUSEUM boasts features such as old chimneys, salvaged bridges, construction cranes, miles of tile, and even two abandoned planes!" That's what the website says about the place, but for a 5 year old and me, it just meant lots of fun. It's basically an enormous jungle gym that runs inside and out of a huge building that used to be a shoe warehouse. There's more to see and do than you can possibly get to in a day, and you can climb up on top of the building, into an abandoned airplane, slide down huge pieces of metal that have been fashioned into slides, swing from ropes that sit over skateboard ramps, and do just about anything. It has caves made out of materials from the city, classes that teach pottery and painting, tunnels that you get lost in, and circus productions. Here are some pictures of us during the morning and then playing in the museum.















The City Museum had an area where visitors can make all different types of arts and crafts. Alex took this opportunity to make a sign. To all of you who didn't take the time to come visit us in St. Louis, you really must have missed out. Apparently, Raja and I are some of the best hosts in the world. After only being in St. Louis and visiting with us for 2 days, Alex took her one arts-and-craft opportunity and made a sign that proudly declared "I LOVE ST LOUIS!!!!"

The night ended with fireworks in the park near our apartment, and that was cool.. Each weekend of the summer season, St. Louis hosts a free concert and fireworks show, and the fireworks shows are actually REALLY good. They last a long time, are timed to music, and are quite impressive. We forgot to take the camera out to the concert and fireworks, but Alex was in awe of all the lights in the sky. After that, it was Mexican food at Beso -- a restaurant on Washington Ave right behind our home. Alex of course fell asleep 15 minutes into the meal, bless her heart -- it was about 10pm and she'd had a VERY full day. We were all exhausted when we got home, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one that woke up sporting bruises and sore muscles from our City Museum trip the day before. ;)

We'd planned to go to the Arch the next day, so we took everyone to brunch at Urban Eats -- a new cafe in the city that serves paninis, flatbread pizzas, and wraps with pesto and basil and red pepper and spinach and herb chicken .. all kinds of yummy things. It's fairly new in St. Louis and Raja and I visited them the 2nd weekend they were open. We've been back about 4 times already -- The employees are super nice, the food is inexpensive and really fresh, and the atmosphere is laid-back and casual. Great brunch place, so we took our visitors there so they could see where we like to go on lazy Saturday or Sunday mornings. After that, it was off to Ted Drewe's for ice cream, then the Arch! Here of some of our photos around the Riverfront and Arch area. It was a great ending to a fun weekend. :)

Winery Trip

Post by: Beth

Sorry we've been a little slow posting lately.. we've been busy with trips home, visitors (yey!), holidays, and of course, work. I had a few minutes tonight so wanted to post some pictures from a trip to one of the wineries here in Missouri. This is apparently a bit of a tradition for St. Louis residents and visitors and our friends Kim & Calvin invited us when the opportunity became available. I think Calvin's work does this every year.. gets a bunch of people together and takes a bus up to a select winery. You spend the whole day there trying different wines, eating lunch, laying on blankets in the sun, looking at the miles and miles of fields, and listening to blues bands. It was a great time, and we were very excited to be able to take part in this tradition before our time here is over. On a side note, Kim & Calvin are recently engaged, so huge congratulations to them!! :)

Not a ton of time to blog tonight.. Rishi is in town visiting and Mom, Casey, & Alex just left, so we have some cleaning up and more entertaining to do. :) Such a great weekend w/visitors.. We'll post pictures from that soon!

For now, here's some shots from our winery trip!

As you can see, we had a great time.. we ate good food, drank great wine, spent time with fun friends, and laughed a lot. Of course it warranted a nap for me on the way home on the bus.. you know it was a good day when you can't make it home without a nap! ;)